Being from Arkansas means you're born and raised a Razorbacks fan. As a state of 2.8 million with only one BCS team, you're calling the hogs from a young age. For those of you who don't know how to call the Hogs, it involves raising your hands above your head, wiggling your fingers, and yelling "woooooooooo PIG SOOIE" at the top of your lungs. It's great.

Now as a UA alum and a born-and-raised Arkansas, I take great pride in the spirit of SEC football and the traditions of the school. My contention that the SEC has the best tailgating and in-game atmosphere of all conferences was recently called into question by a Big 10 alum, and a bet was placed. We would visit each school, attend a game, and the looser would be properly ridiculed.

Ohio State vs. Northwestern was the first stop. Beautiful campus, great tailgating at Hiney Gate. Not to mention the fact that OSU clearly had an amazing season this year. Best of all, my dear Melissa was singing in Columbus and I got to see her!

OSU Horseshoe on Gameday



Me and Miss Laney in OH-IO



Brutus the Buckeye

So then the Arkansas trip came around. My team has had an interesting year, to say the least. This was about the time when fans started hiring planes to fly anti-Nutt slogans above the stadium during the game. Needless to say, in-game atmosphere was a bit lackluster compared to what I expect. In addition, travel plans were screwed up, thus tailgating was not an option (we barely made kickoff). To make a long story short, I lost. Now to be fair, one has to admit that this was not the best year for a full SEC-style game experience at Arkansas. I concede defeat on this one, but not on all SEC games, darnit. We're still better than the Big 10!

Me and Melissa in Arkansas

My name on College Walk!

I've found that when you move somewhere you have the best of intentions for fully taking advantage of all the activities to do, sights to see, landmarks to visit. You tell all your friends and family about all the amazing trips you'll be taking to said locations/landmarks/activities. And then you move and don't see a darn thing. It's funny, because when you go on vacation you see/do a lot in a limited amount of time. But in your own backyard? Not so much.

With that being said, I have put together a list in and around NYC so that I will a) remember all the stuff I want to do while I'm here and b) be motivated to go and do it on the weekends that I'm not traveling. Some of its touristy NY stuff that I just haven't had the patience to stand in line for, others are very random things I've just gotten in my head to go do. Just to give you an idea of what the list entails:

Adventure races upstate
Hockey game
Roosevelt Island Tram
Camping upstate
Skiing/snowboarding
Hiking on Staten Island
Mohonk- camping, biking
Block Island
Bronx Botanical Garden
Jumping on the beds/riding elevators in Marriott Times Square
Governors Island
Kayaking downtown
That big sailboat cruise thingie
Bike ride around Manhattan
NYC Marathon
Doing 2 triathlons this summer (NYC and Montauk?)
World's Fair
Bronx Zoo
Coney Island
X The Cloisters

So to get started on this list, we took an expedition to the Cloisters. It was perfect fall weather and the trees are finally changing so we got a nice hike in as well in Ft. Tyron park. The cloisters themselves are amazing, both in terms of the artifacts they preserve and the buildings they're housed in. Plus you get a great view of the GW bridge.

About the pics below: first, let me say that the ISO function on the camera that's made for taking pics without flash in low light is amazing. Playing with this function let me take so many great pics that I had a hard time choosing. The GPS was fine outside, but took a bit to find a signal. Not sure if this was due to the tree cover or the day or what, but it was finicky. When I got the unit, I was disappointed to learn that it didn't work inside. However, when I got home and uploaded my pics it mapped the last GPS point the unit recorded before going inside with all the pics I took while I was in the building. I was actually able to map all the pics, including those inside.

Still figuring out how to get my interactive map on the blog, but wanted to share a few pics in the interim...

These guys had to be freezing, but they were so dedicated! They ran back and forth across the park at the cutoff to cheer on their guy in the Olympic Trials on Saturday.

Olympic Trials. Yes, they're running really really fast. No the camera I was using did not have a sport function.

24 mile marker at the NYC Marathon on Sunday. Tons of people out to cheer.

You can see the crowd stretching back around the corner. TONS of people.

And TONS of water/cups.

So I got this nifty box of all this fun Sony stuff in the mail last week, and have spend the past few days running around the city and getting used to the technology. Not gonna lie, I'm dorking out just a little about the GPS data being embedded in my pics. I'm a big fan of Google maps, and can think of a bunch of fun stuff to do with this functionality. Like how I always forget where my fav NYC restaurants/bars/brunch spots are, but if I take a pic and then map it... you get the idea.

Fun pics from this weekend coming soon.